LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. „„___. Copyright No. 

~-^\ 5 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WHEN THE WORST COMES TO 
THE WORST 



WHEN THE WORST COMES 
TO THE WORST 



BY 



P 

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D. 



\*sCi 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1896 






/ 



$S\ ^ 



Copyright, 1896 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 



All rights reserved 



2; -31^3.3 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



WHEN THE WORST COMES 
TO THE WORST 



A LTHOUGH no life is without 
-*• ■*- its vexations, burdens, and 
sorrows, there are many that escape 
the crowning experience of despair. 
They never know what it is for the 
worst to come to the worst. Often 
they find that the griefs to which 
they looked forward most anxiously 
are less terrible as they are neared. 
They are not impenetrable ; they 
envelop us, but not with unbroken 



6 When the Worst 

blackness ; a ray of sunshine strikes 
through and illuminates them. But 
sometimes this is not so. There are 
hours in many lives when endurance 
seems no longer possible. We are 
face to face with a blank wall, and 
the pursuer is behind us raging for 
our blood. Then it seems as if 
there were nothing for it but to 
throw up the arms and yield. To 
change the metaphor, every staff 
seems to break under us, and we go 
down to the bottomless pit. There 
are multitudes who never know so 
much as an anxiety about money ; 
there are many more who, though 
never free from care, are yet far 



Comes to the Worst 7 

from the actual knowledge of need. 
But there are some who live and see 
the whole edifice of their fortunes 
crash in ruin about them. Similarly, 
while there is a vacant chair at every 
fireside and an empty place in every 
heart, there are bereavements of a x uite 
a separate kind — bereavements which 
completely alter the whole life and 
the whole nature, and for which on 
this side of the grave there is no 
complete consolation. One person- 
ality may be so united with another, 
it may enter so intimately into every 
act and thought, that when its living 
presence is withdrawn nothing re- 
mains in life that is not more or less 



8 When the Worst 

touched with the pain of the sepa- 
ration. And while, happily, it is the 
lot of the great majority to escape 
the agony of public shame, it comes 
upon others, either by their own sin 
or the sin of those who are dearest 
to them. It is of such experiences 
that we wish to say something. Not 
much has been said or can be said. 
In its moments of profoundest agony 
the soul is for the most part silent, the 
grief is stony ; it may find no relief 
even in sobs and tears. Afterwards 
the heart shrinks from any recurrence 
to its dreadful hour. Thus the ex- 
pressions of absolute despair in liter- 
ature are comparatively few. Perhaps 



Comes to the Worst 9 

the cry of the heart when the worst 
comes to the worst is nowhere uttered 
so fully as in the Book of Psalms. 
Our desire is to say some words 
against despair to those for whom 
the long-dreaded moment has at last 
arrived, and who verily have seen 
the true Gorgon head. 

It may be noted that the ulti- 
mate collapse is generally the result 
of accumulated sorrows. The heart 
makes a stout fight before it finally 
relinquishes its share in happiness, 
before it ceases for ever to have hope. 
" Misfortunes never come singly " 
is a proverb that has verified itself 
but too often. In most human lives, 



io When the Worst 

it has been said, there are periods of 
trouble, blow following blow, wave 
following wave, from opposite and 
unexpected quarters, with no natural 
or logical sequence, till all God's 
billows have gone over the soul. 
There is in the universe a demoniac 
element which may break over us in 
any moment, and leave us in a horror 
of great darkness. One sorrow might 
be confronted and subdued, if the sun- 
shine came when all was over ; but 
when a man is lifted up and dashed 
down again and again and again, till 
he cries, " I reckon till morning that 
as a lion he will break all my bones, 
from morning till evening he will 



Comes to the Worst 1 1 

make an end of me," he must find a 
refuge or he must die. 

But for the worst sorrows and far 
the last despairs there are remedies 
to be found in time and truth. Truth 
must necessarily come before time, 
for the problem is, How is life to be 
sustained for another hour, how am 
I to bear this misery without having 
recourse to one form of suicide or 
another. The help, if it is to serve 
us, must come instantly, or the end 
is death. There is a help that arrives 
at the very moment when endurance 
seems no longer possible, and that is 
the belief that God is dealing with 
us. It may be, and it will be at first, 



12 When the Worst 

a dark and wavering faith, just enough 
and no more than enough to keep 
the soul alive. But if even so much 
as that is accomplished, conviction 
will grow. If there is a love that is 
constant, that is individual, that does 
not desert us when we cease to be 
worthy of it, that does not turn from 
us in our sharpest agony of pain, that 
is indeed most near, most tender, 
most pitiful when we are most in need 
of it, — that conviction and no other 
will bring us through. 

Let it be remembered that this love 
is not merely an article of faith, but 
a reinforcement of the sinking powers 
of life. Divine grace, according to 



Comes to the Worst 13 

the old phrase, is a real emanation. 
When no change has taken place in 
the outward circumstances, when 
everything seems an unbroken pall 
and sphere of darkness, the spirit, it 
knows not how, finds itself strangely 
nerved and succoured. It is helped 
through the very darkest hour, and 
secretly made aware that the worst 
darkness cannot last for ever. 

Thus it is that time has an oppor- 
tunity for doing its work. Of course 
it is true that this is but a convenient 
way of speaking. Effects are not 
produced by time, but in time. In 
reality, time does nothing and is 
nothing ; it is used for the causes 



14 When the Worst 

that work more or less slowly within 
it, and without which no change 
could ever take place. Hooker says : 
cc Time doth but measure other things, 
and neither worketh in them any real 
effect nor is itself ever capable of any, 
and therefore, when commonly we 
used to say that time doth heal or 
fret out all things, that some men see 
prosperous and happy days, and that 
some men's days are miserable ; in all 
these and the like speeches that which 
is uttered of the time is not verified 
of time itself, but agreeth unto those 
things which are in time, and do by 
means of so near conjunction either 
lay their burden upon the back or 



Comes to the Worst 15 

set their crown upon the head of 
time. Yea, the very opportunities 
which we ascribe to time, do in truth 
cleave to the things themselves 
wherewith time is joined. As for 
time, it neither causeth things nor 
opportunities of things, although it 
comprise and contain both." The 
consolation is that around us are heal- 
ing powers and agencies ; that our 
nature is not organised for permanent 
misery ; that the good God above us 
has salves for our wounds, which, if we 
are only able to live through the crit- 
ical moment, will in due time reach 
them and make life, if not happy, 
at least bearable. The assurance of 



1 6 When the Worst 

this is to be found in the records 
which anguished souls have left. 

Before passing to speak of these, it 
is well to admit frankly that for some 
sorrows there is no cure in this life, 
and therefore in the merciful will of 
God the days are shortened, and the 
sorrow flees away in the sunshine of 
the other world ; and so 

" No load of woe 

Need bring despairing frown ; 
For while we bear it, we can bear. 
Past that, we lay it down." 

Nor are agonies such as those we 
speak of to be easily got rid of. " I 
got over it after a time, and was as 
cheerful as if he were alive again, or 
had never lived at all," — this is the 



Comes to the Worst 17 

story of many bereavements, but not 
of all. When the worst comes to the 
worst, the soul realises with a true 
instinct that life will never be the 
same again. It seems sometimes as 
if a new spirit had taken possession 
of the existing body when the true 
soul has departed. Many people live 
until they die, but many people do 
not. In Mrs. Oliphant's powerful 
novel, " Agnes," there is the most 
vivid expression of this fact that we 
know of in literature. The vitality 
that survived so much is at last 
mastered and disappears. Illness does 
not come ; death does not come ; 
duties continue to present themselves, 



1 8 When the Worst 

and are laboriously discharged, but 
life, so far as it is a matter of personal 
desire, satisfaction, and actual being, 
has ceased and stopped short. The 
sufferers feel that they have had their 
day, and yet much may remain of the 
hard tale of years which God some- 
times exacts to the last moments from 
those of His creatures to whom He 
has given strength to endure. The 
new spirit that inhabits the form may 
be angel or demon, or it may be the 
most human spirit ; but it is a sub- 
stitute, even though no one may be 
aware of the substitution. The life 
which it was joy to possess, and hap- 
piness to continue, has been broken 



Comes to the Worst 19 

short off, and has come to an end. 
Even when the heart is wondrously 
revived and quieted, and a new happi- 
ness links itself with the old — even 
when the wild dark sorrows show 
themselves at last as the fair enlight- 
ened work of God, w 7 e may find it 
hard to feel that the new days are 
linked with the old. But in God 
is the continuous thread of all our 
years, and we must boldly rest in the 
faith that there is a life in Him which 
furnishes its own health, its own 
wealth, its own good, and that the 
whole discipline of Providence is bent 
towards our securing and perfecting 
that secret immortal life. 



20 When the Worst 



II 

TT THEN the worst comes to the 
* * worst, there are perhaps only 
three ways of facing it. There is 
suicide, there is stoicism, and there 
is Christian faith. 

Suicide includes much more than 
the determined taking away of life ; 
everything that unlawfully dulls the 
sensibilities is in the nature of suicide. 
The first impulse in a great anguish 
is to seek something that will imme- 
diately still the pain. God has pro- 
vided many remedies which he even 
presses upon us ; but there are others 



Comes to the Worst 21 

that mock us with a promise of relief 
which he sternly forbids. We must, 
in George Eliot's phrase, " do with- 
out opium/' To fly to drink, or to 
narcotics, is to take the life as truly 
as if we plunged the sword into the 
heart. No matter how slow the be- 
numbing process may be, it is the 
destruction of the higher nature, and 
therefore is in the direction of self- 
murder. Some are mad enough to 
throw away in the dark hour what 
faith they have, and persistently to 
refuse reconciliation. That also is 
suicidal. We read in the life of 
Richard Cobden that his boy, a lad 
of singular promise, when at school 



22 When the Worst 

near Heidelberg, was suddenly seized 
by an attack of scarlet fever, and 
died in the course of three or four 
days, before his parents at home even 
knew that he was ill. There was 
nothing to soften the horror of the 
shock. The parents had just received 
a long letter from him, written a few 
days previously, when he was in the 
best possible state of health. When 
the unhappy mother realised the mis- 
erable thing that had befallen her, she 
sat for many days like a statue of 
marble, neither speaking nor seeming 
to hear, her eyes not even turning 
to notice her little girl whom they 
placed upon her knee, her hair blanch- 



Comes to the Worst 23 

ing with the hours. Mrs. Cobden 
never to the last submitted to the 
blow with the grace of resignation, 
and she never had the comparative 
solace that might have come either 
from religion or from reason. To 
the end she fought against her fate. 
The exercises of souls, after the great 
cruelties of life come home to them, 
must be looked on with solemn com- 
passion. But suicide in every form 
simply means atheism. There is no 
need to enlarge on its cruelty, on its 
cowardice, on its folly ; it is an action 
impossible to any who have a God 
in the world. 

One of the most afflicting stories 



24 When the Worst 

of suicides is that of Haydon, the 
painter. He fought a long battle, in 
which he had little to cheer or con- 
sole him. Perhaps there was only 
one period in his life of more than 
sixty years when his mind was com- 
paratively unharassed, when he worked 
freely as to space and with a certain 
sense of relief from pecuniary pres- 
sure. Even then he had troubles 
from ill-health and other cares ; but 
he had no antagonists that he could 
not overcome. He wrote to the 
Duke of Sutherland : " I believe I am 
meant as a human being to try the ex- 
periment how much a human brain can 
bear without insanity, or a human con- 



Comes to the Worst 25 

stitution without death." Yet he sur- 
mounted many hours of bitter gloom. 
At one period he had to encounter 
the loss of his dear children, one by 
one. His sorrows were cc something 
more than human. I remember watch- 
ing him as he hung over his daughter, 
Georgina, and over his dying boy, 
Harry, the pride and delight of his 
life. Poor fellow, how he cried ! 
And he went into the next room, and, 
beating his head passionately on the 
bed, called upon God to take him and 
c all of us from this hateful world/ 
These were dreadful days." He had 
run into debt, and he acknowledged 
that he was madly wrong in incurring 



i6 When the Worst 

his liabilities, but still kept hope in 
his heart of better times. At last, the 
arrows of outrageous fortune struck 
him by the thousand ; every post 
brought him angry demands for the 
settlement of bills, threats of execu- 
tion, and immediate prospect of arrest, 
imprisonment, and ruin. One by one 
his best hopes fell from him like dead 
leaves fluttering from a bower. His 
soul melted by reason of his trouble ; 
his brain throbbing with fire, ponder- 
ing over his past life, he confronted 
his deep love for his art with his 
broken fortunes, till, stung by the 
bitterness and the contrast, like a dy- 
ing gladiator he determined on self- 



Comes to the Worst 27 

murder, lest he should be left to 
languish in his agony. This is indeed 
a picture of human suffering under 
the utmost burden of wretchedness 
that one does not often see into so 
distinctly ; and vet how clear it is that 
Kavdon threw away the prospect of 
victory. He died in his sixtv-first 
year, in the full vigour of life, and on 
the threshold of what appeared to be 
a hale old age. His affairs were by 
no means so hopeless as he had ima- 
gined. If he had taken the advice of 
the genial old Ouaker who sent him 
one hundred pounds, it would have 
been well for him at least. " I do 
not, indeed, wonder at vour anxiety, 



28 When the Worst 

and I feel for you. Look forward, 
however, with hope, — all may yet be 
well ; keep your noble mind com- 
posed, — you may yet have plenty 
of employment. Be industrious, be 
economical, and you will yet be in- 
dependent. Trust and hope." 

It was an evil hour when he 
succumbed. 

" Have I not had to wrestle with my lot ? 
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven ? 
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven ? 
Hopes sapped, name pledged, life's life lied away ? 

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain. " 

He could have said all that, and if 
he had held fast to the gift of life and 
to his hope in God, he would have 



Comes to the Worst 29 

looked back upon all his battles with 
the peace of a conqueror. 

Sir Walter Scott was in every sense, 
and almost infinitely, superior to 
Haydon. Not very long ago the 
journal which he kept in the last bur- 
dened and shadowed years of his life 
was published in full. It merits in 
many ways the praise bestowed upon 
it by Mr. Swinburne : — 

" Over all the close of a noble and glorious 
life there seemed to hang a dense and im- 
penetrable cloud of suffering, gallantly faced 
and heroically endured, but pitiful to read, and 
in its progress and closing a lamentable gradu- 
ation of collapse. Now we have a record not 
only of dauntless endurance, but of elastic and 
joyous heroism, of life indomitable to the last, 



30 When the Worst 

of a spirit and intellect that no trials could 
impair and no suffering decay." 

We may well agree that Scott is 
himself alone, kind and true, brave 
and wise, single-minded and genial- 
hearted ; and yet when the story of 
his trouble is carefully read, we can- 
not but perceive that he attempted to 
fight his own battle, and that, for all 
his splendid and magnificent gallantry, 
he collapsed. 

Few men have ever been so severely 
tried as Scott. It must be remem- 
bered that, up to the period when 
the clouds began to gather, his life 
had been singularly prosperous and 
joyful. He was happy in his home ; 



Comes to the Worst 31 

he had vigorous health ; his fame as 
an author was continually growing ; 
he attracted the warm affection of 
many friends in every sphere of 
life, and his rich, enjoying nature 
drew pleasure from a thousand 
sources. All of a sudden the scene 
changed. He had to face pecuniary 
ruin, and he had to face it in its 
worst form. The disaster was not 
suddenly over and done with. If 
it had been, perhaps he might have 
borne it ; but he set himself with un- 
flinching determination to meet the 
claims of his creditors, and to the 
very last it was doubtful how far he 
could succeed. Then in the midst 



32 When the Worst 

of his troubles the darkest bereave- 
ments came. He lost his affectionate 
wife and his adored grandchild. His 
bodily vigour, which had seemed im- 
pregnable, began to give way ; and 
last, not least, he had to fight with 
growing doubts of his own power to 
keep the ear and the favour of the 
public. To these blows he opposed, 
it is true, a good conscience and 
an unexampled gallantry. Nor was 
he without faith ; for he was a firm 
believer in God and in the future 
life, and in our Lord as a teacher sent 
from heaven. More than this can- 
not be said. It is true of Scott, as 
Stopford Brooke says of Burns, that 



Comes to the Worst 33 

he never seemed to come into any 
direct contact with Christ, and there- 
fore never into direct contact with 
God. He endured, without repin- 
ing, the calamities that came to him ; 
but I do not remember that in his 
journal there is any instance of his 
asking help in prayer. He did not 
know that through Christ we have 
access to the Father, and that we may 
go boldly to the throne of grace, that 
we may obtain mercy and find grace 
to help us in every time of need. In 
the journal where he unbares his 
heart, we never read of the High 
Priest who can be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities, of the unseen 



34 When the Worst 

Lord and Friend who is nearer than 

the nearest, and never so near as 

when none else is found to help. He 

says at the first onset of misfortune : 

" Came through cold roads to as cold news. 
Hurst and Robinson have suffered a bill of 
^1,000 to come back upon Constable, which 
I suppose infers the ruin of both houses. . . . 
My old acquaintance . . . died suddenly. I 
cannot choose but wish it had been Sir W. 

S , and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have 

Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after." 

He had occasionally wonderful 

rallies. 

" In prosperous days I have sometimes felt 
matter vanish and power of language flag, but 
adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer. 
The fountain is awakened from its inmost re- 
cesses as if the spirit of affliction had troubled 



Coynes to the Worst 35 

it in its passage. ... I sleep, and eat, and 
work as I was wont, and if I could see those 
about me as indifferent to the loss as I am I 
should be completely happy. ... I am in- 
different to it, but I have been always told my 
feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, 
enjoyment and privation, are colder than those 
of other people. I think the Romans call it 
stoicism. Fortune's finger has never been able 
to play a dirge on me for a quarter of a year 
together." 

Yet misgivings came. 

" I have been much affected from morning by 
the Morbus, as I call it ; aching pain in the 
back, rendering one position intolerable ; flutter- 
ing of the heart ; gloomy thoughts and anxie- 
ties which, if not unfounded, are at least foolish. 
I will console myself, and do my best ; but 
fashion changes, and I am getting old, and may 
become unpopular. But it is time to cry out 
when I am hurt." 



36 When the Worst 

Later on Lady Scott died, and he 
says : — 

" For myself I scarce know how I feel ; 
sometimes as firm as a Bass rock, sometimes as 
weak as the wave that breaks on it. I am as 
alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in 
my life ; yet when I contrast what this place 
now is with what it has been not long since, I 
think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, 
deprived of my family, all but poor Anne, an 
impoverished and embarrassed man, I am de- 
prived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, 
who could always talk down my sense of the 
calamitous apprehensions which break the heart 
that must bear them alone." 

Afterward he says : — 

" Everybody has his own mode of express- 
ing interest ; a mind is stoical even in bitterest 
grief." 



Comes to the Worst 37 

Agere atquepati Romanum est. The 
months wear on in hard, incessant 
labor, and in the sternest self-repres- 
sion this is wrung from him : — 

" This is sad work. I begin to grow over- 
hardened, and like a stag turning in pain. 
My natural good temper grows fierce and 
dangerous." 

Then there is the anxiety about his 
grandson. 

" Poor, pale Johnny ! and he is really a 
thing to break one's heart to look at. I am 
afraid I am twaddling. I do not think my heart 
so weakened ; but a strong vacillation makes 
me suspect." 

The final blow was when he was 
made aware that " Count Robert 



38 When the Worst 

of Paris " showed signs of failing 
power. 

cc The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for 
I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes 
with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready. 
Yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the 
vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I will 
right and left at these unlucky proof-sheets, and 
alter at least what I cannot mend. I have 
suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in 
body than in mind, and I often wish I could lie 
down and sleep without waking. But I will 
fight it out if I can. . . . After all, this is 
but fear and a faintness of heart, tho' of another 
kind from that which trembleth at a loaded 
pistol. My bodily strength is terribly gone, 
perhaps my mental too." 

By this time the end was very near ; 
he had hardly another year to live. 



Comes to the Worst 39 

To the last moment of his life he 
demeaned himself as a brave man 
should ; but his heart was broken, and 
it was too late to rally. The battle 
lasted for seven years. 

Contrast with this the experience of 
Silvio Pellico, the Italian prisoner. 
He had made himself famous,* by 
his tragedy, " Francesca da Rimini/' 
when he was imprisoned for revolu- 
tionary opinions, and had to endure 
ten years of confinement beneath the 
leads of Venice, and in the dungeons 
of Spielberg. There are few more 
affecting narratives than that in which 
he relates the story of his lengthy 
endurance, and tells how he recov- 



40 When the Worst 

ered the serenity of his mind by the 
vigour of a sincere faith. In the ter- 
rible moment of awakening after his 
first sleep in prison, the thought of 
his father and mother came to him 
with incredible vividness. Hitherto 
he had not been religious ; but when 
the terrible blow fell, he asked, " Who 
will give me power to support it ? " 
and answered : — 

" He whom all the afflicted invoke ; He who 
gave to a mother force to follow her Son to 
Golgotha, and to stand beneath His cross ; the 
Friend of the unfortunate, the Friend of the 
tried." 

He sought God, and gradually his 
agitation became calmed. 



Comes to the Worst 41 

" One day, having read that it is necessary to 
pray without ceasing, I proposed to begin seri- 
ously this unceasing prayer ; in other words, to 
put away every thought that was not inspired 
by the desire of forming myself after the decrees 
of God. In less than a month I resigned my- 
self to my fate with a tranquillity which, if not 
perfect, was at least tolerable." 

He thought of how happy he had 
been in past days. Who had been 
more happy ? He made friends with 
a deaf and dumb child. Every morn- 
ing, after a short prayer, he made 
a diligent and courageous catalogue 
of every event that was " possible, of 
every circumstance that was likely to 
move him. He rested his imagina- 
tion with intrepidity upon each of 



42 When the Worst 

those circumstances, and made prepa- 
ration for it ; from the most pleasant 
visits to that of the executioner, he 
imagined all. True, he had very bit- 
ter moments, when, of all the things 
he looked into and felt, he knew not 
which was real or which was illusory, 
and he used to cry out in the fulness 
of his heart, " My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me ? " But 
through light and shadow he was in 
the end victorious. He comforted 
his brethren; he prayed for his jail- 
ers ; he had no word of scorn or anger 
for his persecutors. When released 
from the prison, he met life with 
an unimbittered heart, passing his 



Comes to the Worst 43 

days peacefully in literary pursuits and 
the discharge of pious duties, neither 
shunning nor courting honours, and 
keeping his spirit peaceful and sweet 
to the last, one of his final utterances 
being, " I cannot approve of intoler- 
ance, fury, curses, against any class 
of persons." This was a triumph 
achieved in Christ. 



44 When the Worst 



III 

\ FTER an overwhelming sorrow 
■*■ -**■ the soul's immediate business 
is with God. We can only " catch at 
God's skirt and pray." Where the 
one feeling is agony, the one thought 
must be God. When experience 
plunges deep into gloom, it is far less 
easy than might be thought to lay 
hold upon God and to enter into 
active communion with Him. More 
particularly in the darkness, which is 
the nurse of heavy thought, in the 
hour when the stings burn again 



Comes to the Worst 45 

fiercely, we may feel that we are for- 
saken alike of God and man. 

" I would lift my voice to God and cry \ 

I would lift my voice to God that He may give 

ear to me. 
In the day of my straits I sought the Lord ; 
My hand was stretched out in the night without 

ceasing, 
My soul refused to be comforted. 
When I remember God I must sigh ; 
When I muse, my spirit is covered with gloom. 
Thou hast held open the guards of my eyes \ 
I am buffeted and cannot speak." 

u Sorrow, like a beast of prey, de- 
vours at night, and everv sad heart 

knows how eyelids, however wearied, 
refuse to close upon as wearied eves, 
which gaze wide open into the black- 
ness, and see dreadful things there. 
This man felt as if God's finger was 



46 When the Worst 

pushing up his lids and forcing him 
to stare into the night, buffeted as if 
laid on an anvil and battered with the 
shocks of doom." He cannot speak, 
he can only moan as he is doing. 
Prayer seems to be impossible ; but 
to say, cc I cannot pray, would that 
I could ! " is surely a prayer which 
will reach its destination, though the 
sender knows it not. 

But this Psalmist, though he found 
no ease in remembering God, was able 
to turn his thoughts to the great deeds 
of God, and to hold by them. He 
went on : — 

" Then I said it is my sickness ; 

But I will remember the years of the right hand 
of the Most High. 



Comes to the Worst 47 

I will celebrate the deeds of Jehovah, 
For I will remember Thy wonders of old, 
And I will meditate on all Thy work, 
And will muse on Thy doings. " 

Gradually by recalling the past, by 
thinking of how God shone upon us 
from the skies that we have left be- 
hind, we become reassured, and are 
persuaded that His glory will not be 
absent from the clouded heavens 
towards which our worn faces are set. 
To the Christian this should be far 
easier since Christ has come. cc If I 
were God," said Goethe, cc the woes 
of the world I had created would 
break my heart." The reply is that 
the woes of the world did break God's 
heart. Christ our Lord passed 



48 When the Worst 

through where the waters of sorrow 
ran deepest and chillest and angriest, 
and in His grief and in His sympathy 
we have the sympathy and the grief of 
God. In the crisis of our trouble it 
should not discourage us that we are 
dumb, and that the thoughts which 
should have brought us quickest and 
readiest solace fail for the moment 
to comfort us. Let us be sure that 
Christ is in the dark room, keeping 
the soul that is dear to Him alive, 
driving back in the darkness its most 
formidable and deadly foes. Let us 
nourish the thoughts of Christ's 
priestly suffering and His priestly 
compassion, and in due time the poor 



Comes to the Worst 49 

heart will begin to unpack itself; we 
shall be able to speak to God through 
Christ, and the answer will come. 
We shall know that we are not call- 
ing to a deaf or remote God, but that 
prayer is verily heard. 

Of course for a time, for a long 
time it may be, there can be no change 
in our circumstances ; but it does 
not follow that because the circum- 
stances must remain unaltered, no 
change may pass upon us. There 
may be an uplifting and comforting 
of the heart which we are altogether 
unable to explain. " Sometimes a 
light surprises ; " some waft of joy 
reaches us direct from God, and 



5<o When the Worst 

though it is by far too soon for us to 
vindicate the rationality of our peace, 
we are to remember that the peace 
needs no vindication, and we are to 
accept it as a direct and precious gift 
from God. Even if only the sharp- 
ness of the pain is abated, if the march 
of the slow, dark hours is in the 
least degree quickened, there is much 
reason for gratitude and for hope. 

At first it is certainly best to seek 
no human alleviation or comfort ex- 
cept, it may be, the most sacred and 
the most intimate. Expressions of 
love may bring their solace with them, 
but it is not well that we should speak 
much at first of our great sorrows. 



Comes to the Worst 51 

Expression is but too apt to react 
upon emotion, and to make the 
burden heavier. But when the re- 
sponse of sympathy is less complete 
than we desire, — and such it must 
almost inevitably be, — a new pang is 
added to our grief. There come 
hours in life when for the sake and 
succour of others we must recall the 
worst of the dreadful past ; but, sav- 
ing for these hours, the secret should 
be left with our God and Saviour. 

Then as some recovery is experi- 
enced, as some strength creeps back, 
it is well to lay hold of what earthly 
helps and solaces are within our 
reach. Many sufferers have testified 



52 When the Worst 

that the most agonising time of their 
sorrow was not in the first weeks, when 
they were thrown directly upon God. 
It came when they returned to work, 
when they obeyed again the ordinary 
summonses of life, and when they 
realised with a slow distinctness and a 
dull pain how irrevocably everything 
had changed. For all this, it is best 
that we should go resolutely back to 
stand at our old post, however diffi- 
cult, irksome, and distasteful the rou- 
tine of life must be for many days. 
However sharp and terrible the re- 
currences of the pain, it is best that 
the mind should be occupied with 
honest labour ; and for many it is best 



fr 



Comes to the Worst 53 

that that labour should exceed and 
not fall under the ordinary measure. 
Innumerable sufferers have testified 
that the resolute and unflinching re- 
sumption of life and work repelled 
many of their worst foes and brought 
them back a certain rest, even though 
it was only the rest of weariness. 
Whatever can be done for the physical 
condition ought to be done. Perhaps 
more heed should be paid to the 
" hygiene of sorrow/' for the suffer- 
ing is physical as well as mental. No 
wise counsel of this kind should be 
disdained, and whatever lawful solaces 
God puts within our reach, we are 
free to avail ourselves of them. Times 



« 



54 When the Worst 

of great trouble often reveal the mean- 
ness of human nature and the self- 
ishness of much apparent friendship. 
The sufferer emerging from the storm 
finds himself lonely and in the midst of 
a desolation which is like the oblivion 
that waits for the dead. But often, 
on the other hand, one finds himself 
infinitely richer than he had supposed. 
A true affection manifests itself in 
many from whom he looked for 
nothing. It is wise, it is Christian, 
generously, unreservedly, gratefully, in 
the hour of our overthrow to accept 
what friends can do for us ; and we 
should welcome with an eager grati- 
tude the hour when " the low 



Comes to the Worst $$ 

beginnings of content " are dimly dis- 
covered. No sorrow should be nursed 
and cherished. Sorrows should not 
be despised, it is true ; our business 
is not so much to get over them as to 
get through them ; but there are some 
who encourage them and foster them, 
and deem themselves guilty of a kind 
of treason when their eyes are open to 
breaks in the clouds. All sinful, all 
cowardly escapes are barred to the 
Christian, but there are many which 
are open to him, and to which he is 
made welcome. Those are happiest, 
it has been said, whom a great sorrow 
strengthens while it saddens, and who 
can carry on the past into the present 



56 When the Worst 

in lonely fortitude. It may be so, 
but there are others in whom sorrow 
seems to be destroy' ;ig the very power 
of love and the piety of memory ; and 
if there is opened up to them a new 
spring of happiness, they are to drink 
from it. As one has testified : " The 
whole history is something like a 
miracle legend, but instead of any 
former affection being displaced in 
my mind, I seem to have recovered 
the living sympathy that I was in 
danger of losing. I mean that I had 
been conscious of a certain drying up 
of tenderness in me, and now the 
spring seems to have risen again." 
It may be, however, — it will almost 



Comes to the Worst 57 

certainly be, — that the break in the 
clouds is but for a moment, and that 
the grey wrack again overwhelms the 
heavens. Once more, then, all that can 
be said is, cc Hope thou in God ; " and 
perhaps this is the chosen message to 
great sufferers, the message which most 
surely brings them health and reviv- 
ing. They must go on, but they do 
not go on in solitude. Christ is with 
them, and in due season not only 
they, but their circumstances, will 
change. The desert over which they 
travel will not be trackless if Christ 
is by their side, and perhaps there may 
come a gleam of brightness even in this 
life. With what pathetic insistence the 



58 When the Worst 

Psalmist prayed for this ! We may 
pray for it too ; we may hope for it ; 
we may comfort ourselves with the 
records of lives that have emerged 
triumphant from sorrow into peace. 
All these things are lawful, but in the 
loving will of God it may be that our 
circumstances will not alter until we 
pass from this life to the other. On 
to the very edge of Jordan the path 
maybe stony and sore for our feet, even 
though we drink of the spiritual rock 
that follows us, even Jesus Christ. In 
any case, we know that communion 
with Christ must persist and be per- 
fected, and that the righteous shall 
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom 



Comes to the Worst 59 

of the Father, though no glory comes 
to them beneath these skies. Earth 
may grow grey and dim, its glories 
may pass away, but there remains for 
us a rest, " a region afar from the 
sphere of our sorrow," where every 
joy that was and is not shall come 
again, and come with no threatening 
of change, — the land where the am- 
aranthine flowers are unwithering and 
all their sweetness unaltered as the 
great eternity passes. And so, even in 
default of hopes fulfilled here, we may 
be able to say, " I will hope contin- 
ally, and hope maketh not ashamed." 
We must try to gain from our 
sorrows, not only to emerge just alive 



60 When the Worst 

and just able to take some poor part 
in the fight. We must be more than 
conquerors through Him that loved 
us. It is not well to interpret our 
sufferings as judgments, as punish- 
ments for sin. They may often be 
these, but Christ on the cross taught 
the meaning and the blessedness of 
sorrow, and there is a deep and 
awful word which tells us that God 
scourgeth every son whom He re- 
ceiveth. If there is no chastisement, 
the nature remains at a low level of 
strength and insight. It is the man 
of conquered sorrows who is every- 
where the man of power ; and when 
the waves are running high in our 



Comes to the Worst 61 

souls, none can calm them as those 
can who have passed through the 
same tumult. There is no sympathy 
like the sympathy of a sufferer, no 
sympathy like His who suffered 
most of all. 

Great sorrows never leave us what 
we were before. Then none can 
pass under that hammer and remain 
the same. But even if we are left 
without chastisement, something is 
daily passing from us, always passing, 
— -that something which comes with 
youth and hope and love. After a 
great baptism of sorrow, we must be 
different ; but what we should pray 
and strive for is that we may emerge 



62 When the Worst 

from it better, richer, more faithful, 
more helpful, more filled with a 
heartfelt delight in God's will, more 
able to make a true answer to God's 
surprises and wonders of love. The 
skies above us are at best April skies ; 
our path will not be always smooth, 
even though we seem in the past to 
have suffered more than our share ; 
but we poor men and God's wealth 
are stored together in God's pavilion, 
and the place where they are both 
safe is God Himself. We cannot be 
poor when close beside us are the 
infinite riches given so freely to all 
who need. 

And let this be our last word. 



Comes to the Worst 63 

There are periods in life, years and 
years, when no great trouble visits 
us. Then the storms of sorrow fall, 
and we are apt to say, I have passed 
through, and I may hope for an 
immunity for the future. It is not 
so. The troubles may come back, 
they may come back again worse. 
As has been said, our Pharaohs are 
seldom drowned in the Red Sea, and 
we do not often behold their corpses 
stretched upon the sand. The bit- 
terness of death may return. What 
then ? At the very worst, the 
memory of the past will help us. 
We shall retrace the slow, difficult 
way to peace ; our trust in God will 



64 When the Worst Comes 

be deepened, and we shall realise 
that, after all, the range of sins and 
sorrows is limited, though the sea of 
troubles may roll its white-crested 
billows as far as the horizon. What 
are truly numberless are God's mer- 
cies. What is truly infinite is God's 
love. 



